If you don't think laughter is the best medicine, just ask Prince William.
Despite a stressful week – which included a pregnancy announcement, hospital visits and more – the dad-to-be has managed to maintain his sense of humor.
The Prince, making his first public appearance since wife Kate was released from King Edward VII hospital following a four-day stay with hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness), attended the Winter Whites Gala in London on Saturday.
Michael O'Higgens, a former chairman of homeless charity Centrepoint, which the gala benefited, told reporters: "[William] said they shouldn't call it morning sickness as it's a day and all night sickness."
Inside the event, William shared his more serious perspective on his country's homeless population.
"About this time a few years ago, for one night, I gave up the warmth and comfort of my bed and tried sleeping on the streets of London. Of course, this was just one night. I was cold but safe and I knew I had a home waiting for me," he said.
"Many others have no such luck. The cold streets are the only reality they know. And yet so often their spirit shines through. What these unfortunate men, women and young people could achieve given the right opportunities is limitless. I really, really believe that," he continued.
William was originally scheduled to attend the British Military Tournament at Earl's Court in London on Sunday, but has canceled and will be spending the day "privately with the Duchess instead," a spokesman for the couple, both 30, said in a statement to PEOPLE.
"It is well known that hyperemesis gravidarum often recurs and, until further notice, to allow the Duchess a degree of privacy during her pregnancy, we do not intend to offer regular condition checks or advise of routine developments associated with it," the spokesman added.
The couple's next engagement is Wednesday December 12, when they are set to attend the royal premiere of The Hobbit movie in London's West End.
SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.
Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.
A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.
"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"
Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.
Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.
King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.
Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."
Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.
Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.
"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.
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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Matthew Stavron, 24 speaking, mother Kelle Stavron
Chaz La Bry, 26 speaking, mother Robin La Bry
William "Skip" Halpin, 51 speaking, brother Jerry Halpin
Doneno "Rick" Polizo, 58 speaking, wife Margaret Polizo
Karl Finnila, 43 speaking, sister Sally Finnila-Sloane
Jennifer Thurber, 22 speaking, father Charles Thurber
Alex Clyburn, 23 speaking, father Ron Clyburn
Larry Carmichael, 51 speaking, son Dan Carmichael
Clifford Dwight Oshier, 60 speaking, brother Ron Oshier
He prescribed powerful painkillers to addicts who had no medical need for them, conducted sham examinations and appeared to be a key supplier for drug dealers, according to court records.
He wrote more prescriptions than the entire staffs of some hospitals and took in more than $1 million a year.
Worse, one of Estiandan's patients had fatally overdosed on drugs he prescribed, a board investigator learned. The investigator said in her report that she confronted the doctor and told him the death was "the inevitable result" of giving narcotics to an addict.
Unknown to the investigator, two other Estiandan patients had suffered fatal overdoses. More deaths would follow.
By the time the medical board stopped Estiandan from prescribing, more than four years after it began investigating, eight of his patients had died of overdoses or related causes, according to coroners' records.
It was not an isolated case of futility by California's medical regulators. The board has repeatedly failed to protect patients from reckless prescribing by doctors, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
It is board policy to give such cases a high priority. But The Times' examination of board records and county coroners' files from 2005 through 2011 found that:
"Material things are nothing now," said Dr. Carlos Estiandan, who was released from prison in September, after serving roughly half of a five-year sentence. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
At least 30 patients in Southern California have died of drug overdoses or related causes while their doctors were under investigation for reckless prescribing. The board ultimately sanctioned all but one of those 12 doctors, and some were criminally charged — too late to prevent the deaths.
The board seldom tries to suspend the prescribing privileges of doctors under investigation. The agency can petition a judge for an interim suspension order. It has obtained orders only rarely: 12 times in the last five years in cases of excessive prescribing, in a state with more than 100,000 practicing physicians.
Even when the board sanctions doctors for abusing their prescribing powers, in most cases it allows them to continue practicing and prescribing. In 80% of the 190 cases of improper prescribing filed by the board since 2005, the offending physician was given a reprimand or placed on probation. In most of those cases, the doctor was allowed to continue writing prescriptions with few or no restrictions.
Eight doctors disciplined for excessive prescribing later had patients die of overdoses or related causes. Prescriptions those doctors wrote caused or contributed to 19 deaths.
At the heart of these shortcomings is the board's approach to oversight. It investigates when it receives a complaint of abuse or poor treatment of a specific patient or patients. It generally does not look for evidence of wider problems in a physician's practice.
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For example, in looking into cases of improper prescribing, investigators usually do not search county coroners' files to determine whether — as in Estiandan's case — a doctor's patients are dying of drug overdoses.
Dr. Rick Chavez, a pain management physician in Redondo Beach, serves as an expert for the board in cases of reckless prescribing. He said overprescribing is a pervasive problem, and oversight is inadequate.
"We have doctors out there doing things that no one is monitoring," he said. "It's scary."
The medical board's president, Sharon Levine, a pediatrician who is an executive at Kaiser Permanente, declined to be interviewed, saying it would be "inappropriate" because disciplinary cases are ultimately decided by the board. Executive Director Linda Whitney declined to comment, and staff members said they are barred by policy from speaking with reporters.
Responding by email to written questions, board officials asserted that their "highest priority and primary mission is consumer protection."
In response to The Times' findings, they have asked the Legislature to require county coroners to report all prescription drug deaths to the board.
"If only one physician was found to be overprescribing," the board said in its request to legislators, "this could save numerous lives."
Estiandan, a diminutive man with a cheerful demeanor, had a thriving general practice. He sang tenor in his church choir, played golf once a week with his sons and took his wife ballroom dancing. He was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and led medical relief missions to the Philippines, where he grew up and attended medical school.
In October 2004, one of his employees reached out anonymously to authorities.
The man told Robin Hollis, a medical board investigator, that Estiandan, then 62, was taking in $3,000 in cash a day selling prescriptions. Drug-addicted patients, the employee said, crowded the lobby of the doctor's clinic west of downtown Los Angeles, one of three he owned.
"Estiandan will give the patients anything they want," he told Hollis, according to her report.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department were also investigating Estiandan, and the agencies shared information.
Evidence accumulated quickly. Alleged drug dealers were arrested in Los Angeles carrying bottles of medications prescribed by Estiandan, court records show.
A Costco pharmacist reported that groups of men in their 20s and 30s were showing up at his counter with prescriptions from Estiandan for painkillers, tranquilizers and muscle relaxants — the makings of a drug cocktail that is popular with addicts.
The pharmacist, Edward Wong, told authorities he would call Estiandan to make sure the prescriptions were legitimate, and the doctor would instruct him to fill them. Eventually, Wong stopped calling and simply refused to fill the prescriptions.
In Albuquerque, DEA agents stopped a man who was carrying more than 1,800 pills and several bottles of narcotic cough syrup with a street value of up to $500 each. According to court records, the medication labels identified Estiandan as the prescriber.
In the summer of 2005, about 10 months into the investigation, Leo Martinez checked in at Estiandan's clinic in Reseda. He paid a $120 fee for the office visit and waited a half-hour to see the doctor.
What happened next is detailed in court records.
Estiandan asked Martinez what was wrong.
"Nothing," Martinez said. He explained that he wanted a refill for painkillers he had been prescribed by another doctor whose clinic had since closed.
Estiandan asked him why he was in pain: Had he fallen or been in an accident?
He asked Martinez again if he had hurt his back or been in an accident. This time, Estiandan nodded and raised his eyebrows.
No, Martinez replied.
Estiandan said the other doctor must have had a reason to prescribe painkillers.
Martinez said it was a long time ago and he couldn't remember.
Estiandan told Martinez he couldn't prescribe the drugs unless there was an indication Martinez was in pain.
Then he asked Martinez again if he had hurt his back or been in an accident. This time, Estiandan nodded and raised his eyebrows.
Reading the cue, Martinez said he hurt his back lifting weights.
Estiandan pulled out his prescription pad.
Martinez was an undercover sheriff's narcotics investigator who had been secretly recording the conversation. He left Estiandan's office with prescriptions for the painkiller Vicodin, the muscle relaxant Soma, the anti-anxiety drug Valium and a 16-ounce bottle of narcotic cough syrup.
The medical board and law enforcement agencies were not the only ones interested in Estiandan.
Medi-Cal agents suspected him of fraudulent billing and put him under surveillance. They followed him as he drove home to Northridge in a Lincoln Navigator or Lexus sedan, sometimes stopping at a hospital or to pick up takeout at a Filipino restaurant.
But amid this intense scrutiny of Estiandan's life and medical practice, one thing appears to have escaped attention: what was happening to his patients.
One of them, Pamela Stone, suffered chronic pain from herniated disks. She also struggled with anxiety and had trouble sleeping.
Stone's mother grew concerned when she didn't hear from her daughter for a couple of days and asked the manager of the Reseda apartment building where Stone lived to check on her.
On Nov. 20, 2006, the manager opened the door to the apartment and found Stone's lifeless body on her bed. There was a trace of dried white foam around her nose and mouth.
The coroner determined that Stone died of an accidental overdose of multiple drugs, including an anti-anxiety medication prescribed by Estiandan. She was 54.
Hollis continued with her investigation, unaware of the death.
Hollis is one of about 130 medical board investigators on the front lines of patient protection in California. They look into allegations of physician misconduct ranging from botched surgeries to sexual abuse of patients.
Their ranks have dwindled, even as the number of licensed physicians in the state has risen over the last decade, to 102,000.
There are about 30 fewer investigators today than in 2001. The board opened 1,577 investigations last year, a 40% decline from a decade ago, and investigations now take longer to complete: an average of 347 days, compared with 256 in 2001.
Members of the Medical Board of California meet in Torrance in May. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
The agency is overseen by a 15-member board appointed by the governor and legislative leaders. By law, eight members must be doctors. The board is funded by physician licensing fees, a revenue stream that was supposed to be immune to California's boom-and-bust budget cycles.
But Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown used the board as a piggy bank, taking $15 million in licensing fees — the equivalent of a quarter of one year's budget — to help fill holes in the state general fund.
Schwarzenegger ordered state employees to take three unpaid furlough days per month, hobbling the board's enforcement efforts. Brown imposed hiring freezes. At one point, 1 in 4 investigator positions were vacant.
The board's staff has warned for years that the cuts were crippling its ability to protect the public. Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, a public interest lawyer who has monitored the board for the state Legislature, said the situation is urgent.
"The medical board is regulating the most important profession in terms of irreparable harm," Fellmeth said. "It should not be neutered."
The board's challenges go beyond the financial. Unlike medical regulators in other states, it cannot suspend a doctor's license or prescribing privileges on its own, even to prevent imminent harm.
Instead, the board must petition a state administrative law judge for an interim suspension order. If it obtains an order, the board must file a complaint against the doctor within 15 days — a legal provision for which physician groups lobbied, Fellmeth said.
The 15-day rule means that "an investigation must be nearly complete" before the agency can seek a suspension, board spokeswoman Jennifer Simoes wrote in an email.
If a doctor has been criminally charged, the board can ask a Superior Court judge for a suspension. It has done so a handful of times in recent years in cases of excessive prescribing.
Board officials said they sometimes hold off on seeking suspensions until that point to avoid jeopardizing a criminal investigation.
Steve Opferman, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who runs a task force on healthcare fraud and took part in the Estiandan investigation, questioned that rationale. He said the board should move swiftly to shut down a doctor's prescribing whenever lives are at stake — even if it could affect a criminal prosecution.
The danger in waiting, he said, is that "people are going to die."
Andrew Corless began abusing drugs at the age of 15 and spent at least eight stints in drug treatment. On Aug. 11, 2006, he had a moment of resolve.
He called Estiandan's office at 11:45 a.m. that day and left a message.
He was about to undergo drug detoxification, according to a handwritten note by a receptionist, and he asked that the doctor "please not see him anymore."
Three hours later, Corless called back with a message "to disregard" the earlier call.
Leslie Greenberg lies in the grass at a park after leaving flowers at the nearby grave of her boyfriend Andrew Corless, who died in 2006 of prescription drug and alcohol intoxication. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
Corless was in Estiandan's office 10 days later, pleading for drugs, court records show. He was back again in December, this time after leaving rehab early.
On Dec. 13, 2006, Corless, 46, was found on the street in front of his house in Northridge, dead of an overdose. Two of the drugs found in his system — hydrocodone and alprazolam — had been prescribed for him by Estiandan.
A month later, authorities searched Estiandan's offices and home. They found hundreds of partially completed prescription forms, some of them already signed, along with $12,300 in cash, court records show.
Looking at patients' records, investigators saw that groups of people from as far as Bakersfield, the Antelope Valley, Victorville and San Bernardino would show up at Estiandan's clinic near downtown Los Angeles on the same day, describe the same symptoms and leave with prescriptions for the same drugs.
Shortly after the raid, Estiandan was back at work — and writing prescriptions at a furious pace.
DEA agents consulted a database on prescriptions for controlled substances, written for patients paying in cash, to see where Estiandan stood. For March 2007, he ranked first in Southern California, Nevada and Hawaii, and fifth in the United States, according to court records.
For Joyce Saldivar, 55, he prescribed hydrocodone.
Saldivar had chronic back pain and was known to abuse her medications, according to coroner's records. She died June 29, 2007. The cause was an overdose of multiple drugs, including hydrocodone.
Estiandan acknowledged that Corless was an alcoholic and an addict and had “begged” him for drugs, according to Hollis' report.
By then, Hollis had learned about Corless' death from his girlfriend, who complained to the medical board about Estiandan, court records show.
Hollis got Corless' medical records and the autopsy report, and summoned Estiandan to an interview at a board office in Glendale on Sept. 12, 2007.
Estiandan acknowledged that Corless was an alcoholic and an addict and had "begged" him for drugs, according to Hollis' report.
Hollis told Estiandan that she couldn't understand how he could "continue to give pain medication to a person who is addicted," according to her report. "I explained that now there was a patient death.... This was the inevitable result. It was just a matter of time."
Hollis later obtained a report from an expert physician stating that Estiandan's treatment of Corless included "extreme departures" from accepted standards and contributed to his death.
Another patient, Wilma Jones, 47, was found dead in an unfurnished one-room apartment in South Los Angeles on Feb. 14, 2008. She had contracted pneumonia, and various drugs had suppressed her breathing to the point of death, coroner's records show.
One of the drugs was hydrocodone, which Estiandan had prescribed for her, records show.
Within a six-week span that summer, three more people died after taking medications prescribed by Estiandan. In all, seven of his patients had died since the medical board began investigating nearly four years earlier.
Estiandan, an early riser, was on the computer, tending to his stock portfolio on the morning of July 23, 2008, when a throng of DEA agents and sheriff's deputies appeared at his doorstep.
The doctor was polite and cooperative as an officer handcuffed him and led him to a police car. He was charged with 13 felony counts of illegally prescribing controlled substances. He was not charged with any of his patients' deaths.
Clint McKinney, center, hugs his mother and wife after scattering the ashes of his father, Bill, who died of cancer, and brother, Byron, who died of prescription drug-related causes. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
Three weeks later, the medical board asked a Superior Court judge to suspend Estiandan's license, saying it was "the surest way to protect the public" from a doctor who "supplied patients with drugs, not medical care."
While the board waited for a ruling, Estiandan was free on bail and seeing patients.
Byron McKinney, a former pro wrestler, had been seeing Estiandan for eight years and had gotten hooked on the muscle relaxant carisoprodol, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and a narcotic cough syrup, according to his brother, Clint.
McKinney, 33, died Nov. 18, 2008, of heart disease. The coroner said carisoprodol and hydrocodone were contributing factors. An empty bottle of hydrocodone cough syrup prescribed by Estiandan was found on a coffee table near McKinney's body.
About this story
This is the second in a series of occasional stories on the epidemic of prescription drug deaths. For this article, reporters Lisa Girion and Scott Glover, with help from reporter Hailey Branson-Potts, examined medical board records, coroners' files and court documents, and interviewed doctors, law enforcement officials and relatives of those who died from overdoses.
Times photojournalist Liz O. Baylen created still images and videos, contributed reporting and helped conduct interviews.
Stephanie Ferrell designed the web presentation and Armand Emamdjomeh created the interactivity.
Clint McKinney told a coroner's investigator that he and his brother "were able to regularly obtain prescription painkillers at free will via an unethical doctor who would write them five prescriptions for $120," records show.
In February 2009, six months after the board went to court, a judge barred Estiandan from prescribing painkillers and other addictive drugs. He surrendered his medical license that September. The next year, he was tried and convicted on the criminal charges and sentenced to five years in prison.
He was released in September after serving about half his term. A few days later, he spoke with Times reporters in the spacious home where he now lives on a ridge of the Verdugo Mountains in Burbank.
He referred to his time in state prison as "my vacation" and described how he practiced guitar, tutored inmates, volunteered in the chapel and read the Bible.
By turns defensive and contrite, Estiandan complained of being unfairly targeted by prosecutors for simply doing his job.
He said he warned patients of the dangers of becoming addicted to prescription drugs, telling them: "Eventually you will lose control of yourself."
He recalled that his wife, Gloria, a nurse, had warned that he was headed for trouble. She saw the disheveled people in his waiting room, Estiandan said, and told him: "Just let them go."
Estiandan, now 70, said he was not motivated by greed and never intentionally harmed patients. But he said he realizes he used poor judgment in prescribing drugs.
"Instead of helping them, I might have harmed them," he said of his patients. "I made a mistake."
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LONDON — The Romany people constitute Europe’s largest and, arguably, now its most persecuted minority.
A new genetic study published this week suggests their ancestors arrived in Europe from northwestern India in a single wave around 1,500 years ago, half a millennium earlier than previously thought.
The international authors of the peer-reviewed paper in Current Biology journal said their study is the most comprehensive ever of the demographic history of the Romany. They said it reveals the origins of a people who “constitute a mosaic of languages, religions, and lifestyles while sharing a distinct social heritage.”
Scientific American noted that earlier studies of the Romany language and cursory analysis of genetic patterns had determined India was the group’s place of origin. But the new study points to a single migration from northwestern India around 500 CE.
Previous studies largely overlooked the place of Europe’s 11 million Romany in the Continent’s gene pool. That was partly a consequence of their continued isolation and marginalization, and partly due to a history of oppression that in many countries continues to this day.
The prejudice has historically been most evident in Eastern European countries with large Romany populations. But recent tensions have spread, including to Romany families seeking a new life in the west.
In one incident in late September, a mob in Marseille, France set fire to an encampment of 35 foreign Roma. As many as 20,000 foreign Roma are said to live in France, most of them Romanians or Bulgarians.
Thousands were deported and their encampments razed during the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, as my colleague Scott Sayare recalled in an article in August, although François Hollande, his successor, has promised to better integrate the newcomers into French society.
A more activist Romany population has found a voice, however, showing it is no longer prepared to take the old prejudices lying down.
Some even reject the word Gypsy because of its historically negative connotations, a perception borne out when Lindsay Lohan used the term last week as an allegedly racial slur during a nightclub altercation.
Romany protestors last year turned out in Rome to demand better living conditions after four children died in a fire that destroyed their illegal camp.
And Romany families last month won a pledge from the Czech education ministry that it would finally end widespread discrimination against their children in schools after a landmark 2007 case in the European Court of Human Rights.
The European Roma Rights Center, based in Budapest, is active in pushing similar cases in European courts to combat anti-Romany racism.
My colleague Chris Cottrell wrote in October of continuing discrimination in a report on a ceremony in Berlin to unveil a memorial commemorating an estimated half million Romany who died in the Holocaust.
He quoted Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany saying, “Let’s not beat around the bush. Sinti and Roma suffer today from discrimination and exclusion.”
The latest genetic study may at least contribute to establishing the Romany’s rightful place in European history — for the last millennium and a half.
The scientists, who revealed a strong admixture of non-Romany genes in northern and western countries during their migrations, said further studies would help define the identity of their Indian ancestors and provide further details of their migration and subsequent history in Europe.
No, it doesn’t make any sense that you have to turn off your iPad or Kindle during airplane landings, and now the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission wants to see that change. In a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski urged the agency to “enable greater use of tablets, e-readers, and other portable devices” on flights, The Hill reports. Genachowski went on to say that letting passengers use their devices more during flights is important because “mobile devices are increasingly interwoven in our daily lives” and that they “enable both large and small businesses to be more productive and efficient, helping drive economic growth and boost U.S. competitiveness.”
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Shakira with students of the Barefoot Foundation in Colombia
Courtesy Shakira
Shakira was 8 when her parents taught her what life was like for the most vulnerable people in her native Colombia. Visiting an impoverished area, "I saw kids living on the street, running around barefoot and sniffing glue," says the singer. "I made a promise to myself that I would become successful and do everything in my power to help those kids."
She has turned that vow into a second calling. Launched 17 years ago, her Pies Descalzos Foundation (and its U.S. counterpart, Barefoot Foundation) will open its seventh school and community center in Colombia next fall. The foundations provide education and nutrition to about 6,000 kids, plus jobs and resources for 30,000 others.
"Last year some of our students had among the highest placements on standardized tests in the country – and we are talking about kids who are the children of families displaced by violence and conflict," says Shakira, 35, who also supports projects in Haiti and South Africa. "There is nothing more gratifying than seeing a child who could have been recruited into drug trafficking or guerrilla warfare not only graduating from high school but excelling throughout and now preparing for university."
"That includes David Rueda, 17, who graduates this month. Going to college, he says, is "something that my parents or brothers and sisters couldn't [do]." Shakira hopes to pass on her commitment when she and soccer star Gerard Piqué, 25, welcome a baby next year. "I want my child to grow up in a fair and just world," she says, "knowing he too can be an agent of change."
Watch Shakira and more at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.
SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.
Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.
A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.
"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"
Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.
Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.
King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.
Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."
Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.
Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.
"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.
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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.
Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.
"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.
It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.
"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.
And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.
"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."
But what does that mean, really?
Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:
One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.
Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."
Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.
A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.
There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.
Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.
When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.
Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.
Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)
On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:
"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"
Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.
Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.
Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.
Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.
Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.
As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.
nita.lelyveld@latimes.com
Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.
Khaled Meshal, left, the head of the political bureau of Hamas, arrived for a visit to the Gaza Strip on Friday. With him is Ismail Haniya, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Khaled Meshal, whom the Israelis tried to assassinate in Jordan in 1997, arrived for his first visit to the Gaza Strip on Friday as head of the political bureau of Hamas, which has established a ministate here.
For Mr. Meshal, 56, it was a triumphant visit, and Hamas fighters, armed with rifles and wearing balaclavas, lined the streets where he was to travel. He entered from Egypt, through the Rafah crossing, an indication of a new alliance with Cairo.
“Gaza, with its martyrs, cannot be described in words,” he said as he arrived here in Rafah, with tears in his eyes. “There are no words to describe Gaza, to describe the heroes, the martyrs, the blood, the mothers who lost their sons.
“I say I return to Gaza even if I never have been here. It has always been in my heart.”
Mr. Meshal fled the West Bank with his family after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and had never returned to Palestinian territory. In 1997, when he was in Amman, Jordan, agents from the Israeli intelligence service, posing as Canadian tourists, tried to kill him by injecting him with poison. The agents were captured by Jordanian authorities, and Mr. Meshal lay in a coma until the agents handed over the antidote.
He arrived in Gaza to celebrate the 25th anniversary on Saturday of the founding of Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has also risen to power in neighboring Egypt and has been a key to the Arab “awakening” that has shaken old alliances throughout the Middle East.
“This is my third birth,” Mr. Meshal said. “The first was my natural birth. The second was when I recovered from the poisoning. I ask God that my fourth birth will be the day we liberate all of Palestine.”
Mr. Meshal also plans to celebrate what Hamas considers a victory over Israel in the recent conflict here, eight days of fighting featuring Israeli airstrikes and shelling and Hamas rocket launches against Israel. The Israeli government claims that it sharply reduced Hamas’s military capacity, destroying storehouses of rockets and weapons and killing the operational commander of the Hamas forces, Ahmed al-Jaabari, at the outset of the fighting.
Still, Hamas negotiated a cease-fire with Israel through the agency of the Egyptians, and for the movement it may represent an important step toward becoming a more recognized international player and representative of at least a portion of the Palestinian people.
Mr. Meshal was expected to visit the homes of Mr. Jaabari; the Dalu family, who lost 10 members in an Israeli airstrike in the November fighting; and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, an assassinated Hamas spiritual leader.
The Fatah movement controls the West Bank, which Israel still occupies, and the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas is the defining principle of Palestinian politics, despite continuing efforts by Egypt to bring about a reconciliation. The uprising in Syria drove Mr. Meshal and the Hamas political bureau out of its offices in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to resettle in Egypt, pulling Hamas farther from Shiite Iran, which continues to help sponsor it, and closer to its Sunni Muslim roots. That has also made Hamas potentially more attractive to Egypt and Israel as a negotiating partner, however indirect, in trying to preserve stability in the region.
But Hamas, which considers itself a fighting force in contrast to Fatah, which has engaged in direct negotiations with Israel, is proud of its accomplishments in Gaza, even as it has put a more repressive and Islamist stamp on society here.
Decorating the stage where the anniversary celebration will be held is a mock-up of a large rocket, called the M-75, that Hamas claims it has built on its own and can reach almost 50 miles, close to Tel Aviv. The M stands for a dead founder of Hamas, Ibrahim Maqadma, killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2003.
In fact the Hamas anniversary is Dec. 14, but the organization moved the celebration forward a week to honor the first intifada against Israel.
Research In Motion (RIMM) is gearing up for a series of make-or-break releases that could be considered the most important device launches in the company’s history. Everything is riding on the success of the RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform, which will be unveiled in its finished state on January 30th next year. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins is on record confirming that BlackBerry 10 will launch in the first quarter and company COO Kristian Tear previously stated new BlackBerry devices will be available “not too long after” the platform is unveiled late next month, but exact timing is still a mystery. According to Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, however, RIM’s first two BlackBerry 10 handsets won’t launch until March and June, respectively.
“RIM’s stock has been on a tear recently thanks to a number of upgrades and optimism surrounding its upcoming BB10 platform,” Detwiler analysts wrote in a note to clients picked up by Forbes. “However, as we dig a little deeper, there appears to be a few issues that could set up for some disappointing numbers in the 2013 first half.”
The firm goes on state that AT&T (T) and T-Mobile will launch the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone some time in March, while Verizon Wireless (VZ) and Sprint (S) are targeting May launches. Detwiler also states that the second BlackBerry 10 smartphone, which will feature a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard, might not launch until June.
“Therefore, it is possible RIMM’s February quarter may only see a very small number of BB10 sales with the May quarter also coming in light due to limited QWERTY keyboard shipments and limited shipments to Sprint and Verizon,” the firm continued. “It’s our opinion RIM will ship approximately 400,000 BB10 units in the February quarter and 2.2 million to 2.5 million units in the May quarter. While this is clearly a North American / developed market view, we think this is the right way to look at the 2013 first half because the initial BB10 handsets are higher end and not targeted for emerging markets.”
When asked to comment on the Detwiler note, RIM spokesman Nick Manning reiterated the company’s earlier position. ”Details of the commercial availability for BlackBerry 10 will be announced at the global launch events on January 30,” Manning said in a comment provided to BGR via email. “Our executives have made it clear that the touch screen device will be available shortly after launch with the physical keyboard version to follow shortly after that.”
BGR’s own sources were not able to provide details regarding the exact timing of RIM’s upcoming launches, however we are hearing from reliable sources that RIM’s QWERTY-equipped BlackBerry 10 smartphone will launch well ahead of the June timeframe mentioned by Detwiler.
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